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Welcome to the emulation thread. A thread in which we chat about the ever changing world of emulation and the various wacky things emulations allows, like:
Why emulate? Sometimes you really want to go back and enjoy something but sometimes things can get unreasonably expensive (collectors gotta collect) or, in the worst case, might not exist at all anymore. Imagine a world where your favorite form of entertainment doesn't exist anymore. What does emulation do? The gist of it is making one machine act like another. for example, you can make your beefy modern gaming enthusiast PC be able to mimic a meager pokemon mini, letting you enjoy an unreasonable facsimile of those bits of software. In some cases, you can even provide improvements on old software like better audio sampling rates and higher resolution graphics. whats a good emulator for <insert device here>? Ask away. Its what this thread is for! Why isn't there an emulator for <insert device here>? Many reasons. Ranging from no ones bothered to make it yet to the thing being more complex and undocumented than it appears. Can I ask for or post ROMS? Nope~! Judging from some older threads abandonware seems to be okay, though ask a mod first as the definition of abandonware is a slippery slope. Other cool emu threads: Dolphin Thread PCSX2 Thread PPSSPP Thread Some Notable things in emulation: Dolphin Emulator: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/ Probably what I consider to be one of the best run and devved modern emulators. They are open, they aren’t anti-social ,and they run a good blog that details some of the more important updates with comparison videos and everything. If only more emulators were run like that. Internet arcade: https://archive.org/details/internetarcade With the power of javascript growing, The archive.org folks set up a buncha javascript emulators in which you can play some of the arcade classics right in the browser. On top of that archive.org carries obscenely unreasonably huge archives of loads of possibly-abandoned ancient games and software. Retro Achievements: http://retroachievements.org/ Someone managed to rig a bunch of emulators to allow people to craft achievements and leader boards for old video games. its very community driven and can be very fun but, cause its a dude’s pet project it sometimes gets a lil’ glitchy. GGPO http://ggpo.net/ and Fightcade http://www.fightcade.com/ and others Folks managed to rig an arcade emulator with emulation friendly netcode that makes them play really well online. Of course they plugged that right into fighting games so you can enjoy multiplayer classics like Street Fighter and King of Fighters (and even some non-fighting games) almost as good as if you were at the arcades. RetroArch: http://www.libretro.com/ An interesting project that combines loads of emulators (and other things) into one product. It isnt as specialized as other emulators but it makes up for it with sheer quantity and a unified interface. Perfect for oddball platforms like HTPCs and Mobile. MAME and MESS: http://www.mamedev.org/index.php The big boy of emulators.Its focus is to emulate all the games as accurately as possible, often at the cost of speed. a lovely project whose work has improved the emulation of many devices and even other emulators. Virtual Console, Playstation Classics, etc: The big console manufacturers are getting in on the emulation game and are repackaging old titles with custom emulators and putting them up for sale for the nostalgia hungry. In some cases, such as with nintendo’s offerings, a bit more attention to detail is paid to make it as authentic as possible. (Ironically, Currently the ‘best’ way to emulate Zelda:TOoT on pc is by emulating the emulated wii version through the dolphin emulator) TAS (Tool Assisted Speed Runs) http://tasvideos.org/ A different sort of speedrun wherein people use tools like emulators and scripting to beat games as fast as inhumanely possible. In some cases, hilariously breaking the game by playing it fast enough.
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Jan 23, 2015 18:30
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I can't recommend the Emulation General wiki enough. It gives you information on almost all of the emulators available for each platform, and the pros and cons of them. There's also info on the technical aspects of games consoles, as well as the techniques and compromises used to emulate them. Although if you just want to get up and running as quickly and easily as possible, RetroArch is a great choice.
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Jan 23, 2015 18:42
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